


Parked

by TPride



Series: In Conversation [2]
Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:10:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6840301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TPride/pseuds/TPride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is dead and Mike wants to meet up</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parked

"Hello John. How are you doing?"

"Ah for goodness sake, Mike! We were not a couple!" John replied.

"I'm not saying that you were." Mike Stamford backtracked at once.

John looked away. "So why meet here? 2 Cups from the Criterion Bar? This exact spot where we met for the first time in Donkeys' years? Aren't you the one being a tad sentimental?" John bit at him.

"You've even started to sound like him!"

"Yes, but I am not Sherlock, alright? If I was I would have figured this out long ago!"

Mike spoke insistently now. "John, when someone you know dies like that, it's bound to have an effect on you. That's why I asked you to meet me. And here is mainly because it's convenient for me." Mike shook his head then continued. "John, I know enough about you to know that you don't let yourself be taken in easily. You can be a very unobtrusive presence, and that's always been your forte as a doctor. That the patient forgets you're there and stops lying."

John heard that, but didn't quite hear it.

"It's a very attractive quality, because it acts as a catalyst. And it's rare, John. Don't let go of it!" Mike insisted.

John leant back on the garden bench now, trying to think. Sherlock had said something quite like it, once.

"How do I do that?" He asked.

"Mainly you're just there." Mike replied. "John, it's akin to naivety, but it really has no bearing on it. It's that you look at things without prejudging them. Most people don't really see things, they see the concept, or what they expect to see. They don't really look, and so they don't really see. Sherlock probably saw everything, and had a mind able to take it all in and then sort his impressions and make deductions. Takes a good mind to do even half of that! And then a hell of a lot of training to accomplish the latter. But for someone to become the catalyst to that mind, that's quite an achievement!"

"Alright. I accept the compliment." John replied and finally accepted one of he cups of coffee Mike had been holding throughout.

Mike Stamford smiled and toasted him and they sipped.

"John, tell me, do you believe he's still alive?"

John looked away, then back again. "I don't know what I think. Just not that he committed suicide, for all I watched him do it."

 

John's mind shifted gear, to his internal place, and the monologue that ran all the time there, now Sherlock was gone.

What is it that makes us select one another? What is it that makes being seen by another human so very powerful, you're impelled to strive for that vision, that thing they saw in you, whether you know what it was or no? What is that power to see, to recognize, and to kindle that trust in people, that they will willingly follow you? That because you've shown them trust, then they'll return that trust, even unto loyalty, even unto death?

John felt the thoughts hitting him like fat drops of pelting rain, but one at a time.

 

He finally looked at Mike and saw pale neutral eyes appraising him.

"Let me ask you exactly what you're trashing out here, John." Mike had waited until he had John Watson's attention again. "Survivor's guilt? Or are you trying to out-deduce Sherlock Holmes? Because, if it's the latter, and he did outwit his opponent and is still alive, you might be putting his life at risk by proving how he did it!"

John sat back, his jaw dropped open, then he closed it and glared at Stamford.

"Are you warning me off?" 

"I'm telling you that what you're facing is the nightmare of any war-widow. The not knowing. And that you may have very little choice but to endure it!"

John stared at the park but didn't see any of it. Didn't even want to see any of it.

"Look you came back from Afghanistan shot up with a psychosomatic limp, which disappeared around Sherlock. That tells me your PTSD was much more a case of severe under-stress. Now that you've added real PTSD on top of it, it's no wonder you're shaking apart." Mike told him from his end of the bench.

"That also tells me that Sherlock saw something in you. Even if you don't know what it was, it made you come alive again! It gave you a purpose, and your life had meaning again! And that is a huge gift!" Mike insisted. "You have to hold on to that gift, John. Whatever you make of your life, remember, that you were seen once too."

"Are you paraphrasing Shakespeare at me?" John derided.

"I suppose I am. But even if Sherlock Holmes was everything he said he was, and everything you believed him to be, you're still stuck within the war-widow's dilemma. And you can't stay there! John, you have to move on. You have to allow yourself trust again. You have to become what you can be, while remembering that he saw you!"

"So what are you offering me? The worst thing possible: Hope?" John replied bitterly.

 

John had seen so much destruction in the war. So much loss of limbs, of futures, of hopes, so much death, that he could not cope with the pain of his return home to the peace of London. Until Sherlock had seen him. Had seen something in him, had recognized some quality in him that made him go: I want this one for a friend, for a companion, for someone I can stand to share my flat with. For it hadn't just been a 'he'll do' it had been something else. The myriad of information in Sherlock's mind had settled on a shape that would fit. And somehow Sherlock had recognized that shape in John, and had latched on to him, recognized him, and brought him back to life.

John was tired of feeling dead again, of feeling half useful only. He was tired of waiting for something that logic told him would never happen, and tired of hoping for the impossible to happen anyway, because, however you looked it, this was Sherlock Holmes! Come on! Jumping off a four story building onto a flag stone pavement and survive it? Piece of cake!

 

John stared at his coffee cup, not drinking from it, just using it and the people around him for an alibi.

Stamford spoke up again. "Now, I can tell you one thing. If you do discover that Sherlock is alive, you can't let on."

John stared at him. But Mike Stamford wasn't even looking at him and just forged on.

"So what you need to ask yourself is whether you can creditably do that? If not, you're better off not looking for answers. You're better off pretending you've looked enough, and that you've reached an impasse. That you're satisfied, sort of, with the answers you've got."

"As the best way to protect him. If he's still out there, still alive." John Watson replied.

"Yes. But you also have to ask yourself how to best protect yourself, how to protect John Watson. How bad is this for you?" Mike asked him.

"It's bad." John admitted, finally. "Thank you for asking."

"I'm glad I could help, if only a little."

John rose, and limped a few steps, then stopped and turned to look back down at his acquaintance. Mike Stamford hadn't moved at all. His whole body stance suggested an openness to continuing this conversation that John had long learnt to recognize in his psychiatrists.

"But how did he do it?" John asked, testing the man. If Sherlock was alive, figuring out the why wouldn't be simple, and he had already tried. Why was he being pushed in that direction? "If Sherlock did survive, however he did it, he didn't want anyone to know! Why do you want to know?"

"I don't." Mike Stamford replied. "Trying to figure out the 'how' is what's tearing you apart. So try a different angle, John. Work with what you've got."

"And what is that, exactly?" John asked, reverting to character, polite standing back from the problem.

"You knew him. You liked him. Maybe you can figure out the why?" Mike asked.

"Why he would commit suicide right in front of me?" John asked bitterly. "He waited for me. He knew I'd come." 

"So he wanted you there." Stamford confirmed it.

"Yeah. To see his downfall." John was bitter now.

"Alright, then let us be logical. I'm sure you've been over this, but let's take it one more time: Why would he kill himself in front of his best friend? Either, he didn't care what that would do to you. Or else he needed you there for some other reason. An overriding one. Or, he believed your trust in him was strong enough that you would not believe his death even if you saw it with your own eyes. And he was partly right, wasn't he? If you believed he was just bastard enough to need you for his final audience, then you'd have long moved on! You'd have mourned the friendship you thought you had, hated the man, and moved on. But you haven't, because your instinct tells you still to trust the man! John, why would he want you there?" Stamford asked.

John walked about again, limping. But he didn't go far. He found himself returning to the bench, to the questions being asked. Because so much of his life was just walking in circles now, ever decreasing in size, while his life had been put on hold.

Stamford waited until he was within comfortable speaking range again, then spoke quietly. "Look, either Sherlock was a fraud, and he did kill himself. Or else he did a stunt that fooled everybody. You have had a long time to figure it out, and you haven't. So go back to Sherlock's reason for doing whatever he did."

"He killed himself!"

"Ask the next question." Mike insisted like any good scientist. "Why would Sherlock Holmes kill himself? You obviously don't believe the fraud theory. So what could make the man you knew, and obviously liked, kill himself or pretend to kill himself?"

"You're saying... Find out why he did it?"

Stamford paused for half a breath. "If nothing else, knowing the why, any probable why of his action, should help you sleep at night."

John looked down at the gravel of the path.

"You're good."

John was really looking at Mike Stamford, now. Thinking.

"I can't deduce why Sherlock did what he did." John replied.

"Can't you? John, when you were in Afghanistan you learnt to trust your instincts. Instincts have kept humankind alive for longer than reasoning. Your instincts told you to trust Sherlock Holmes. If you are to trust them still, you are also in a sense still trusting him. Because he trusted you: Sherlock Holmes let you in to his life, he let you close. And he didn't have many people close to him."

John still wasn't speaking.

"What would make Sherlock do something so desperate as to risk his own life, even to the point of throwing it and his reputation away like that?" Mike Stamford stated the question that John knew had been hanging on the edge of his mental horizon for far too long. John was breathing hard now. He started to walk around the bench again. His limp wasn't visible as he finally walked on to the grass behind the bench.

"You're saying that he had a reason?" John asked, testing the waters.

"No, you're saying that. Based on your knowledge of him." Stamford pointed out to him.

"But..." John stopped his pacing and stared at Mike Stamford's rotund body. "Why?"

"It's a better question than 'how', don't you think?" Stamford asked him kindly. John looked away.

"John, I never knew him like you did. I can't even begin to imagine a why. But maybe you can. And in that I hope you can find a measure of peace."

John watched as Mike Stamford looked at his watch, got up apologetically, dumped his coffee cup, and with a sympathetic smile headed out of the garden back towards Barts.

John went back to the abandoned bench. Here he sat staring into the garden without seeing it. Much more focused and not nervous any longer. When he left awhile later he walked down the street without limping.

 

Mycroft's car pulled up beside him keeping pace.

"How are you doing?"

"What?" John asked. Not feeling like being particularly gracious towards Sherlock's brother. But not at all surprised at being contacted by him either.

"How did your friend find you?" Mycroft asked on. "What did you talk about?" 

"My problems. Not his!" John replied, then waited for the car to stop before grabbing for the handle to get in. Mycroft locked the doors.

"Look. I know this is hard for you." 

"Yes it is Mycroft. It is very hard for me not to kick in the face of the man who sold out his brother to the one man in the world who could successfully drive him to suicide!" John barked right back at him! And then he walked away.

Mycroft's car pulled away speeding up, then came to a stop nearly at the corner and Mycroft got out right in front of John.

"What did he tell you, Doctor Watson?"

"Nothing. He just made me think."

"About what?"

"Are you asking me a question? I thought us ordinary people bored you. But before you go, I actually do have a question for you. Why do you care?"

There was no answer.

"Because you think your pest of a kid brother might actually have been smart enough to pull it off? Stage his own suicide right in front of his best friend? And why would he do that, unless he thought I would keep believing in him, as indeed I do? Would Sherlock Holmes be surprised to find that you believe in him, too?"

"Aren't you worried that you're imposing your own standards on Sherlock?"

"No. I'm not. Because Sherlock knew me, Mycroft. With all my limitations, he knew me. Knew that even if I'll never figure out the how or even why he did it, I know that he had a damned good reason."

Mycroft didn't answer.

And John Watson stepped around him and kept walking, forwards.


End file.
